Speech recognition affords automobile drivers a hands-free, eyes-free method
of replying to Short Message Service (SMS) text messages. Although a voice search
approach based on template matching has been shown to be more robust to the
challenging acoustic environment of automobiles than using dictation, users may
have difficulties verifying whether SMS response templates match their intended
meaning, especially while driving. Using a high-fidelity driving simulator, we
compared dictation for SMS replies versus voice search in increasingly difficult
driving conditions. Although the two approaches did not differ in terms of
driving performance measures, users made about six times more errors on average
using dictation than voice search.